The US Motor industry want a piece of that financial aid the US government seems to be handing out to irresponsible bankers at the moment. The motor industry have already been given $25 billion to develop gas-not-guzzlers, but a cleaner environment isn’t really their focus at the moment. They’d rather use it to prevent bankruptcy.

But Congress, or the Senate, or whoever it is who makes the decisions in that loopy superpower country, isn’t really buying in to the story.

The day’s hearings, before the House Financial Services Committee, got off to a rousing start when panel chairperson Barney Frank asked how the government could justify a bailout for banks and insurers, but not the automakers.

“Frankly, there seems to me to be an inherent cultural bias,” Frank said. “Aid to blue-collar employees is being judged by a standard different than white-collar employees.”

But is the aid the motor industry asking for really going to help the blue-collar workers on the shop floor?

Gary Ackerman, Democrat from New York, noted the irony of the CEOs flying on private jets and “getting off with tin cups in their hands”.

“Couldn’t you have downgraded to first class or something, or jet-pooled … to get here?” he asked. “It’s almost like seeing a guy show up at the soup kitchen in a high hat and tuxedo.”

I have considered whether to post these pics up on Paternity Ward, but things appear to be at a standstill that side. At least we have a trickle of syrup flowing over here at Waffle Group, although it is cold, viscous syrup.

People are asking me for news of Jethro, for photos of Jethro, for happy uplifting information, for rays of sunshine, for things like that.

I’ve been meaning to oblige. I really have. Sadly for you, you still ain’t gonna get no satisfaction. Perhaps some other time when I feel less demoralised.

Instead, I need to get something off my chest and this is the forum I’m going to use. I don’t expect to creating particularly interesting reading-matter, and neither should you expect to find any in this post.

Those who are frequent readers of this weblog will recall that some 8 months ago I bought a nice, shiny, new house. Useful pictures of it are available via Picasa Web Albums. I need to update those pictures with some real gems. A possible forthcoming attraction.

Becasue, as it turns out, the house is more soggy than shiny. It has rising damp. It has extensions that are falling away from the original part of the house, creating cracks in the roof and allowing water to infiltrate there too. The extensions don’t appear to have been built to standard building specifications, with the water-proofing layer below ground level in some places.

The building insurance guy came and had a look yesterday and his summary was: “Sorry for you. Existing damage. Take it up with the previous owner.”

He did at least give me good advice on what to do and who to contact in getting things fixed, but it seems like the bill will be entirely on me — unless I can get the previous owners to pay (Bah! What are the chances?)

A damp-proofing/rising damp expert is coming to have a look this afternoon. I hope it’s not as bad as I instinctively feel that it is.

I’m looking for CAD software on Linux, and I came across SagCAD. The only value I derived from my interaction with the software was the above dialogue box. The software is horribly unintuitive and crashed when I tried to open some of my existing dxf files.

It took me 15 minutes before I figured out how to draw a line, and I’m usually quite good at unravelling mystifying user interfaces.

Here in South Africa, Trick-or-Treat and Halloween festivities are not broadly practised. I’m not certain why.

Perhaps we had Apartheid instead of Halloween, where white people dressed up as white people and trampled on the human rights of black people dressed up as black people. It was always Trick in those days, and never Treat. Now that we no longer have Apartheid, nobody knows how to treat, and since everyone is used to tricks, that’s all they expect to get handed out when Trick-or-Treating.

And yet, last year some small children appeared at my door, dressed amusingly and raising the question, “Trick or treat?”

They seemed very disappointed with my offer of homemade rusks (all I had in the house at the time), declined them, and skulked off.

I felt so bad about it that this year I went on a special mission to buy treats. I bought Smarties, liquorice, chocolates and toffees. Unfortunately, this year it was my turn to be disappointed. No little whippersnappers arrived at my door. Not even white kids dressed as white kids, or black kids dressed as black kids.

At long last, some of the follow up photos that we didn’t have time to shoot on the first set. Grant is supposed to be giving me a copy of his magazine that he put together, and I’ll check whether he minds me posting some of the photo-shopped versions of the photos I took.